I was looking for things to do in my half-a-day (more or less) in Nagasaki when I came across the Giverny cafe! It’s part of the Mihara gardens (link to site), which are two small gardens, a cafe, a bar, and a few shops all clustered together in a small neighbourhood in Nagasaki which overlooks the city. The cafe looked amazing from the photos, so I ordered a taxi (it was either that or a bus and I didn’t want to waste too much time) and headed there.

Mihara Gardens was created by Kazuyuki Ishihara, a garden designer who won many medals at the Chelsea flower show. Which means that the cafe is FILLED with flowers. Well, even before I reached the cafe, the peaceful surroundings already took my breath away.

Giverny is a small, peaceful place filled with many nods to Ishihara’s wins at Chelsea flowers – from the beautiful English-style teacups to photos of him at the show. Since I wasn’t too hungry, I decided to enjoy their “Tea Free” experience for 1,100 yen. In this case, “free” means the freedom to enjoy tea, not the absence of it, and the tea free experience means you get 8 cups of different flavours of tea, all chosen by the staff. It’s basically a continual surprise as to what comes next and a great way to slowly relax in the cafe.

The teas are provided by Mlesna tea, which I actually have a lot of fond memories of from the Kichijoji tea house (I think this may have been the first brand that I brought boxes back to Singapore! Which means that as much as I credit Lupicia for sparking an interest in tea, this is probably the brand that got me hooked on tea). In fact, I think this “tea free” concept is from them, because I remember having a galette set lunch with… you’ve guessed it, many different cups of Mlesna teas. Well, that and also because when I searched “Tea Free” online, I basically got a lot of Mlesna tea results from various restaurants.

The eight teas that I tried were:

• Tulip rose: This tea had a strong rose note, but later revealed a bit more generic floral notes (which I guess is the tulip). I liked it because it wasn’t too overpowering.
• Hakutawa earl grey: This is a peach earl grey tea and I tasted more peach than bergamot, which I didn’t quite mind because I think peach is a great match for black tea.
• Kyoto Shijo no Kaori: This was a blend of raspberry, rose, and jasmine. It has a very heady scent of rose mingled with jasmine and smells like perfume. I didn’t quite get the raspberry but this tea is more gentle than it smells; also, the more I drink this, the more distinct the jasmine note becomes.
• 果実のアールグレー: This is a fruity earl grey, which means that it smells like fruits. I thought it tasted quite sweet with the bergamot part of the earl grey being more of an aftertaste.
• Rose and Caramel tea: This was more like a naturally sweet rose tea that smelled sweeter than it tasted, which is good because I don’t like my teas too sweet.
• Lemon tea??: Full disclosure, I couldn’t catch the name of this tea because I was talking to the waitress about when I was going to leave and to ask them how many more teas. But this was a pretty good citrus tea!
• Banana melon raspberry jasmine tea: Yes, this is a pretty long name and it could just be that in my notes, I took down the explanation of the tea. The dominant note here is the banana and there’s a bit of a floral aftertaste which I think is the jasmine.
• English breakfast: After all that flavoured teas, we ended with a plain malty tea that served as a palate cleanser for me.

With so many delicious teas drunk, it’s probably no surprise that I bought some Mlesna tea here. So I’ll be back soon with some slightly more detailed reviews to make up for my complete lack of talk about Mlesna before this!